Sunday, 18 March 2012

I found some excellent advice about painting watercolour washes on http://watercolorpaintingandprojects.com/index.html. The website describes a technique to obtain a smooth application of colour. It relies on angling the paper and creating a bead of watercolour that you gradually move down the page.

The instructions are very detailed. Initially, I followed them to the letter, but as I gained experience, I was able to improvise with the technique.

I’ve commented on previous posts that sometimes I am too heavy handed with the brush. An important moment for me was realising I could gently tease the bead down the page by touching the brush to the bead, without needing to touch the paper.

I painted the swatches from right to left and from bottom to top. The bottom row is a flat wash, the middle row is an example of charging (changing from one colour to another mid wash) and the top row is a graded wash. The two right hand columns are painted with a number 12 round sable brush, the second from the left is painted with a 1 inch synthetic flat brush and the left hand column is painted with a half inch decorating brush.

Sunday, 11 March 2012

This is the last and most complex of the simple sky demonstrations from John Lovett’s Splashing Paint DVD.

The sky starts with a watery dirty yellow wash in the middle of the paper. While this is still wet, grey is added to the lower part of the sky and blue is added to the top. Some of the yellow and some clean paper is left showing in the middle to form the brightest part of the clouds. The area around this bright area is then blotted with a crumpled paper towel to create the clouds.

After this first wash is dry, the bottom of the sky is glazed with blue to make it seem further away. Darker blue is added to the top to create some stronger edges on the clouds and some dark grey is added to strengthen the shadows in the bottom of the clouds.

Once the sky is dry, the foreground is added to give the sky some context.

This was a difficult sky to paint - the version on this post is is my third attempt. Making the clouds seem fluffy and cloudlike was particularly tricky.

My next wash experiment will be to paint some flat and graded washes. Then I will move on to some more skies from programmes on the Painting and Drawing channel.

Sunday, 4 March 2012

Elaine is lying on a pillow with a sheet covering her lower half. The sheet is crumpled and piled up on her back.

I drew it in four 25-minute sessions. One of the biggest challenges was to reorganise the sheet at the start of each session so it at least vaguely resembled its original appearance. In retrospect, I should have used a much simpler arrangement, but you live and learn.

I’ve already celebrated my last Modelled Drawing in Water Color (see Farewell Modelled Drawing in Water Color). I wasn’t overjoyed to find this one lurking in the schedules, but I enjoyed it. I’m pleased to have had a last chance to make friends with the exercise before it really did disappear.